The problem
Market-systems and food-security programmes run on market data — for targeting, for setting cash-transfer values, for M&E. Getting it usually means commissioning surveys: months to procure, weeks to field, out of date before the report is bound. Meanwhile the shock you exist to respond to has already moved prices in the markets your beneficiaries buy from.
What you do with Lokoja
- Replace one-off surveys with standing monthly price series across 67 markets, exportable for any commodity your programme touches.
- Read the demand-signal layer: every question traders ask our free WhatsApp assistant — in Hausa, Yorùbá, Igbo, Pidgin and English — is a structured record of what people need, where. Questions we can't answer map underserved markets.
- Watch price dispersion between markets — widening gaps flag broken trade corridors before they show up in nutrition data.
The metrics you'll watch
- Local staple prices vs your transfer-value basket — keeps cash transfers honest to reality.
- Inter-market price dispersion — early-warning for corridor and supply disruptions.
- Demand-signal volume by region and language — where need is concentrating.
Decisions it powers
Where to site the next intervention; when to adjust transfer values; which corridors to invest in unblocking; and continuous M&E evidence for donors without a new procurement cycle.
The payoff
A single commissioned market assessment typically runs $30k–80k and is a snapshot (illustrative). Standing intelligence costs a fraction, never goes stale — and the demand layer sees shocks move weeks before survey data can.
Numbers marked real come from our engine's July 2026 data. Numbers marked illustrative show the shape of the return — we'll compute yours from your own volumes on a call.